


Mess Hall

by yungdreams



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Cooking, Food, Food Porn, Gen, co-op life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:27:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yungdreams/pseuds/yungdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where all the playable characters, living together in Overwatch Central Control, decide to start fixing their own meals on a cooperative cooking schedule.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mess Hall

**Author's Note:**

> You probably shouldn't read this if you're hungry.

Armies run on their stomachs. 

In the devastation caused by the dismal dishes the cook staff served at Overwatch Central Control, it was Rat and Hana who suggested the same thing.

Why don't we cook our own food? We'll go in shifts.

Breakfast was normally fend-for-yourself; they normally had bread around and their industrial fridge was stocked top to bottom with an esoteric and variegated spate of different raw materials. There was always food around.

The sheet on the door to the kitchens had the sign-up sheet for lunches and dinners; Hana started the trend of marking a little bunny face instead of her name, but after Reyes started drawing skulls instead of his name, the rest of the team agreed that only Hana could do it anymore.

Fareeha had fond memories of the Cairo metropolis, eating hot shakshouka from restaurants flanking the Nile, with garlic, hot peppers, and softboiled eggs fried on top. When she cooked with Lúcio, it was moqueca, filled with freshly cleaned prawns boiled to a pink softness with cilantro, lemon, and shark meat. Sometimes they'd get ahold of Piraiba catfish, which Lúcio had eaten once on tour in Porto Velho and fallen in love with, with cumin, lime juice, and paprika. Fareeha's favorite was kebbah, made with bulgur flour and lamb, tasting of cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and mint, which Lúcio loved to watch her make, sometimes setting some of the meat aside to stuff with cheese to make Brazilian-style quibe. It took all of Fareeha's effort to keep Ana from babying her cooking, with the soldier shooing her mother away whenever she saw a shock of her white hair appearing in the doorway to the kitchens.

Ana was more old-fashioned; soft, homemade pita with lemon tahini, Greek-style mulukhiya with piles of snowy white rice and pan-cooked chicken. Jamie was a fan of Ana's cooking, of ful topped with Iranian pistachios, spicy enough to bring tears to his eyes. When he cooked with Ana, the two split their wisdom; Jamie went ballistic for smoked sheep's tongue, glazed with cane sugar, or lamb gyros with whipped tzatziki and chili paste, while Ana went for similar fare, like green peppers and beef kibda with lemon. The two were more alike than they knew.

Lena and Jamie mostly did seafood. When she cooked with the kitchen rat, the first thing they'd agree on was good old fish and chips. Some days they'd do the British kind, with cod, other days the Australian kind, with wobbegong, all the while crispy, fried golden brown with chips splashed with malt vinegar, no matter how much Reyes and McCree argued as to what they should be called. Lena snacked on toasted chestnuts with cinnamon, like the ones the food stands sold back in Whitechapel, and fixed up hot monkfish with cockles, and shepherd's pie with fresh rosemary and thyme. The only thing Jamie couldn't get right was the tea—he was so used to him and Mako steeping it until it became as bitter as brandy, and Rat's green tea was an enormity that brought Hanzo to tears on one occasion.

Mako and Jamie were a menace to the kitchen. The two had spent so long in the Outback that they were used to stripped down meals and bush tucker, of SPAM alongside fried bugong in canola oil, firepit witchetty grub, with its insides soft as boiled egg, served with bitter billy tea and rum, Mako's favorite. When the two really got into gear, they did whole hog rotisserie, brown sugar beans, twice-cooked violet Maori potato, and raw horopito leaves with sour pie apples and kiwi. Winston adored witchetty grub, but he asked that they set aside a fresh, squirming pile of them on the nights that they cooked. Hog and Rat weren't the most diligent cooks; they burned things frequently, left dishes in the kitchen, huffed nitrous while cooking, and forgot accommodations, but their food was usually fantastic.

McCree grew up on thick burgers, cheddar cheese, and cow's milk alongside tortillas, fresh black beans, and sweet potato mash with peaches and summer squash, orange as the setting sun. In the Deadlock gang, he honed his chili-cooking skills to a chef's discipline, with ground beef, oregano, and heaping handfuls of cayenne pepper. When he cooked with Reyes, the two made tacos con lengua, slow-cooked cabrito barbacoa, mole oaxaqueño, cubanos with thick pickle slices, guaraches like the ones that Reyes' dad used to make, dripping with melted queso fresco. The two squabbled constantly when they cooked, but they agreed readily on tall glasses of amber-colored lagers and pigs' feet for appetizers.

Reyes' cooking was popular with Mei. When he cooked with her, he cracked a rare smile after tasting her braised oxtail stew, and her Chongqing-style catfish, tongue-tingling with ginger, was a hit with Lena and Lúcio both. Mei's personal favorite was Sichuan-style beef heart, cut into thick, juicy slices and cooked with shallots, sesame, peppercorns and red cabbage, slabs of smooth meat thick and just enough chewy, like McCree's steaks. All of Mei's dishes were piping hot, usually served too hot to eat for several minutes; she filled the kitchen with steam, rarely cooked with more than a tank top on, and was constantly dripping sweat and wiping her fogging glasses.

Hana and Mei were both crazy for zhajiang-mein. They spent their cooking shifts usually experimenting to get the soybean paste to the perfect saltiness before adding broth, although the duo usually settled on something more simple for the rest of the crew, like egg noodles with hot peanut butter sauce, or chao fan stir fry with seitan, scallions, peas and sprouts, sometimes with kimchi, sometimes not. Hana was used to eating quick little meals, but snacking during her daily streams usually couldn't quell her appetite for bulgogi with soft, rubbery mushrooms, or bibimbap topped off with cucumbers, fried egg, sprouts, and sour gochujang. 

Zarya and Mei both loved oxtail, although Mei, along with everybody except Lena, thought aspic was an absolute crime against food in general, bringing a moratorium against it in the kitchen. Nevertheless, Zarya made wonderful soups and stews: schav with sorrel leaves, spinach and chard, ukha with perch and bream, with softened potatoes and egg yolk, and okroshka, brimming with cucumber, onions, radish, and sausage, served cold as the winter air for lunches. Her piroshki were savory and dense, heaped alongside a pile of cottage cheese and stuffed with mushrooms and rice.

Hanzo was the more stuffy and traditional of the Shimada kids—he fussed over the way in which Hana prepped her miso for soups and glared at Genji when when he grazed the sashimi off the counter during cooking. Hanzo, for all of his culinary talk, was a fairly competent sushi chef and insisted on serving it, although he complained about much of the quality of his work. His personal favorites were skipjack tuna with its strong flavor, octopus for its soft rubbery quality, and sea urchin for its custard-like consistency, delicately pressed and bound into pats of white rice. Nevertheless, he had a curious predilection for mochi ice cream and Castella cake, eating his desserts first with second and third cups of sweet gyokuro tea, giving off billowing curtains of fragrant steam in the Overwatch mess hall. McCree took to teasing Hanzo for his childlike love of sweets, producing nothing but indignation and embarrassment for the latter.

Genji couldn't eat a lot, due to the fact that his stomach was about half the size of normal, and heavy foods normally put a strain on the cybernetic sections of his digestive tract. For nourishment itself, he prepared a thin protein paste, made from mostly silken tofu, that he consumed four to five times a day, as per Dr. Ziegler's orders, but occasionally he indulged in yakiniku, charcoal-grilled beef intestine with onion and mushroom, and scallop tempura, battered in soft wheat cake flour. Genji and Hanzo normally cooked together, and between the dense smells of sliced fish and fresh rice and the loud popping of the tempura oil, the two of them found a common respite; and whilst Hanzo scoffed at Genji's preparing of tonkatsu in the same kitchen just across the aisle from Hanzo's meticulously-cut eel sashimi, Hana scarfed her tonkatsu down and went back to her quarters covered in breadcrumbs.

Reinhardt was exempted from regular dinner and lunch shifts, although he contributed more than his fair share. Reinhardt was fond of barley blutwurst, consuming a herculean amount every week. He made sauerkraut with juniper to go along with braised pork, and had a special secret recipe for vinegar-softened venison. He made rows of golden-brown rolls and loaves of sourdough, wheat, pumpernickel to go with jams of all flavors and varieties; gooseberry, cranberry, grape, strawberry, apricot, and marmalade. The smell of baking bread would flood every section of Central Control's lower floors, and Reinhardt's booming voice would precede him like a herald's trumpet before his person, festooned in his favorite gray apron and pouring sweat, sashaying into the mess hall with a sheet full of breads and a pot of fresh coffee.

76 could cook, but barely, normally grilling hot dogs, hamburgers, and mushrooms for his cook shifts outside Overwatch Central Control on sunny days, but every once in a while he got into the habit of cooking a big breakfast for the crew, early in the morning before any of them were up. His flapjacks were amazing in all forms, served in threes and fours with a pat of butter and a jug of maple syrup for the table; alongside that he did sausage, bacon, fluffy eggs scrambled with milk, and baked beans specially for Lena. Reinhardt would be up at dawn doing calisthenics in the weight room, while Hana could barely be roused before 1300.

Winston didn't mind being on the cooperative cooking schedule, but given that he had a lot of issues manipulating small cooking utensils, 76 or Lena normally accompanied him to the kitchen. He made big plates of sub sandwiches normally, although, during nights when research was difficult, he would normally just order pizza for the rest of the team. For himself, the usual fare of peanut butter, fruit, and sometimes leaves or bark—he had grown fond of accompanying Mako to the kitchen and chewing slices of goldenrod ginger root or peppery horopito while Mako silently prepped the meat sections of his meal.

When Satya was in the kitchen, she began her shifts an hour early to compensate for her intense perfectionism, but her results were electrifying. On some nights, she did chicken tikka smelling thickly of cardamom, orange-red korma sauce with onion and turmeric, mounds of jiggling white paneer cheese, each side fried to a uniform pattern and color; on others, green Thai-style curry with lamb drippings, smelling sweetly of fenugreek, aloo palak with soft russet potato chunks, and roasted goat. Ana would join her in the kitchen on occasion to make aish merahrah, a shared taste between the two, with each section of soft, sweet flatbread carved into perfect circles. Satya checked with a compass.

Amelie and Dr. Ziegler always cooked together. Dr. Ziegler made dinner fare, usually: carrot and pumpkin bisque, slow-cooked beef Burgundy, Älpermagronen with sheep lung and kidney, andouille sausage, poached pike with breadcrumbs and egg whites, turbot and conger bouillebaisse gray as an overcast day, and technicolor ratatouille with aubergine, zucchini and tomato, all drizzled and dripping with olive oil. Amelie made desserts, usually, like madeleines with orange blossom and almond, cold charlotte trifle with pear slices, cream puffs, crepes with whipped cream, or mouthwatering caramelized-sugar praline. The two would talk about the possibility of doing a fondue night at some point, but the normal warp and woof of missions would divert their attentions elsewhere.

Torbjörn pined to make lutfisk for the rest of Central Control, and when they all caved to try it at least once, only Jamie and Mako still retained their enthusiasm when the finished product was brought out. Aside from that, his cooking was solid: boiled eggs, pickled herring, sour cream and chives, meatballs with mashed potatoes and slices of gherkin pickles, gold chanterelle mushrooms, pea soup with pork, reindeer venison with horseradish and mustard on open-faced sandwiches, and potato flatcakes with lingonberry jam. Everyone gawked when Hanzo approved of Torbjörn's salmon gravlax.

Bastion didn't eat. Bastion was an Omnic, after all; but it had a liking to sitting down in the mess hall with the rest of the team during dinner. Lena and Lúcio would often sit with Bastion and talk, and although Bastion was wary of non-Omnics, it was an animated conversational partner. Bastion loved to inspect the food being brought out of the kitchen, and it would beep happily at some of the foods with more colorful arrangements. In this way, Bastion liked Fareeha's shakshouka, with its deep tomato reds, green herbs, and white and yellow eggs, burnt orange in Satya's korma, dark purple in Mei's braised eggplant, the nut-brown rum that Jamie and Mako drank with dinner, and Hanzo's brightly-colored nigirizushi rolls with pinks and oranges and the dark green-black of seaweed rolls, and Winston's yellow-green bananas.

Zenyatta didn't eat, beyond replenishing the milk-like blood than upright bipedal Omnics used for hydraulic suspension through the port in his trunk. But still, he insisted upon cleaning, levitating stacks of plates into their Hobart dishwasher, never touching them as they emerged, steaming hot, to rest on the racks, and moving cookware from wash to sterilize to rinse with mechanical precision. He was fond of the company of others, and would peer in, from the kitchen to the mess hall, to see the togetherness between individuals at the table with food. He loved the expressions on the faces of his teammates when they tasted food, sweet, salty, sour, bitter, the kind of delicate wave of the confluence between happiness and community that made them all feel indestructible.

Therein laid an intense closeness, a kind of unspoken allegiance, forged on the field of combat and tempered in the mess hall.


End file.
